Vehicle coolant pumps, generally referred to as water pumps, incorporate a spring loaded face seal that is subjected to high temperatures, fast rotational speeds, and significant sealing forces. These seals are necessary to prevent leakage of fluid around a moving member, such as a rotating shaft. Common pump seals suffer from a variety of disadvantages, including high incidence of wear, failure due to thermal fatigue, and clogging due to particle accumulation. Failure of the seals obviously results in the undesirable transfer of fluid past the seal.
Current seals can wear in a variety of ways. One common way is due to uneven distribution of fluid surrounding the seal. This uneven distribution can result in the premature wear of the seal dramatically reducing its life. Additionally, if the seal is not sufficiently cooled, or is kept cool unevenly around its circumference, it can fail for this reason as well. While minimal leakage is not severe, and the seals can be replaced before seal wear causes catastrophic failure of the pump, longer lasting and more durable seals are desirable as they will decrease the overall cost of vehicle water pumps as well as allowing the length of their warranties to be increased.